Learn the TRUTH

The Claim:

On Transit"And it is up to governments, especially at the local level, to create these financial incentives for people to use more public transit and give up that personal car use. It won’t work for everyone, but for many people, inexpensive public transit is a great alternative."-Alex Torpey: Why South Orange is a Model Downtown

The TRUTH:

Ignorance of NJ Transit & Commuters

In October 2012, NJ Transit changed their train schedules, negatively impacting thousands of commuters to NYC

A South Orange resident asked Alex Torpey on Facebook to help and replied that "it's not his job to get you to work"

The resident launched a petition drive to have NJ Transit revise their scheduled and gets over 1300 signatures

As a result of the attention, a small group of commuters (SOMACommuters) start meeting with NJT Executives

On October 29, 2013, Hurricane Sandy hits NJ, and completely suspends train service for many days.

SOMACommuters helps NJT get busses to SO appropriately

Alex Torpey begins taking credit for the work of commuters

As a result of the public outcry and from the petition drive, NJ Transit revises schedules.

Alex Torpey takes full credit and never acknowledges efforts of SOMACommuters

After all of this, in February 2013, Alex Torpey forms the "Transit Advisory Committee" that he described to residents as follows:

I would expect this group to conduct most business over email, when possible, so that we don’t have to convene physical meetings This would primarily to be to:a. Generally bounce ideas off each other about this issueb. Help write/distribute announcements/press releases from the village

The minutes of Board of Trustees meetings show that prior to the announcement, no public bids were solicited, no discussions were held and no resolutions were adopted to award a contract to Zipcar

An OPRA request for emails on the topic revealed that Alex Torpey privately contacted the South Orange Parking Authority two weeks prior to have them advise on the appropriate fee to charge to Zipcar. When advised that he should charge $5000, he refused and unilaterally chose to only charge them $3000, before even attempting to negotiate with Zipcar (or request any revenue sharing with them)

In the initial notice about Zipcar in the Village website, Torpey said that the "spaces are rented to Zipcar on an annual basis, and actually brings revenue to the Village". his was misleading since these spaces had already been rented and all that Zipcar was doing was replacing the lost revenue.

Since that time, Alex Torpey has missed no opportunity to promote this private company via the Village website, Twitter and announcements during Board of Trustees meetings. No other private business receives such promotion by the Village.